Diplo Blog

A two-day workshop on implicit communication was held in Belgrade and facilitated by linguist Dr Biljana Scott. The event, organised by DiploFoundation, was open to people from all backgrounds and professions. My field is marketing, but individuals from fields as diverse as art and engineering were able to bring their experiences to the conversation.

Collective decision making is not alien to African culture. In many traditional societies, decisions were made by a council after listening to the views of different age groups and other societal groupings. In Kenya for example, bodies such as the Buch Piny of the Luo, the Njama of the Taveta and Agikuyu and the Njuri Ncheke of the Meru were known to make decisions such as whether to go to war or about the division of farm land after consultation with groups within the community.

Our December WebDebate focused on knowledge management and data diplomacy and the mind-set and skills that the next generation of diplomats needs in order to be effective in these areas.

The 7th edition of An Introduction to Internet Governance, by Dr Jovan Kurbalija, was launched yesterday at the 11th Internet Governance Forum in Guadalajara. In addition to the English edition, the Spanish translation was also launched.

A report from the luncheon event on the occasion of the second meeting of the UN GGE

The IGF, like any other ecosystem, has its own demography. As can be seen in the illustration, the IGF ecosystem radiates both ways from the centre that steers the process and from edges that provide new ideas and inputs.

Governments have placed cybersecurity and cyberconflict at the top of their agendas. Bilateral cyber agreements among lead economies - including the EU, China, India, Japan, Russia, Germany, Canada, and the USA - are on the rise.

By the year 2030, the United Nations hopes to realise their 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). These are concrete objectives that are simple to understand albeit challenging to achieve. The eighth SDG is about promoting “Decent Work and Economic Growth”.

Diplo keeps up with latest developments in online learning and e-diplomacy, but fortunately, we don’t throw out traditional tools if they are still the best option, even if they are lacking the shiny new bells and whistles of the latest trend. Our online courses meet once a week in real (synchronous) time to discuss the week’s hot topics. Although we sometimes do this in a webinar, we usually use a simple text chatroom, with a hypertextable transcript (something like Google Docs comment function) for follow-up discussion.